By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Trump administration’s plan to use illegal immigration as the cornerstone political issue in the midterm elections to try to get more Republicans elected to Congress blew up in its face this week. While Democrats were planning to focus on health care and expanding Medicaid, crying babies being ripped from their mother’s arms at the U.S.-Mexico border, in some cases caught on video, appeared to become a winning issue for Democrats overnight.

U.S. Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat from Alabama, held a conference call with reporters on Thursday, one week after Attorney General Jeff Sessions of Alabama announced the implementation of the policy in a speech on flag day. Jones talked about what happened and what needs to be done going forward.

“People on both sides of the aisle, when they started to speak up, when they saw the crying children, when they heard the stories of literally small babies being taken away from their mother’s breasts, it was just too much for the American public to stomach,” he said. “The White House saw that.”

So President Donald Trump held a signing session on Wednesday and made a show of saving the day on the issue with an executive order supposedly ending the separation of families at the border, by some reports 2,300 children, although many questions remain unanswered, Senator Jones indicated, such as “how these kids are going to be reunited with their families, where they are going to be held, the cost of all of this. This is something that is not going away anytime soon.”

In response to my questions, he confirmed that the new “zero tolerance” policy on the part of the administration was first announced in April and then put into practice by Sessions last Thursday, a move that reminded many in Alabama of a bill that was ruled unconstitutional a few years ago that had been supported by Sessions in an effort to scare away Latino immigrants from coming to the state and prompting many to leave.

Although Jones said it was not just Sessions’ idea. “It was discussed in the White House by hardliners like Stephen Miller and others,” he said, (including Steve Bannon who was recently back on TV news talking about it and clearly back in contact with Trump about the midterm elections).

According to reporting by the Washington Post, Stephen Miller, one of the few remaining original advisers to President Trump, is in charge of spearheading the White House policy on immigration since he has been a steadfast cheerleader for Trump and his nationalist anti-immigration agenda.

“Clearly as we have seen it was designed to deter people from crossing the border,” Senator Jones said, in contrast to the stated administration policy of simply enforcing the laws on the border. “Obviously that is just not going to be the deterrent.”

“These folks are seeking the American Dream,” Senator Jones said. “They’re risking their lives in many cases to do so. It was just a false premise to begin with that it would deter so many people, and then they (administration offices) just dug in and tried to justify it by blaming others, and trying to say it was law rather than policy, none of which was true.”

Senator Jones indicated he appreciated the president signing the order and reversing the policy, as he had asked him to do, “with the stroke of a pen,” admitting he could do it “although he denied it for two weeks.”

“That’s one of the criticisms of what the president did,” he said. “For two weeks or better, we saw nothing but false information coming out of Homeland Security, the attorney general’s office and the administration. This was not a law. This was a policy. So this was always a policy that could be changed with the stroke of a pen.”

Prosecutorial discretion gives prosecutors across the land the ability to decide how they treat any case that comes before them, he said. “How they do that is a matter of policy that can change from day to day.”

“We need to have facts out there, not political rhetoric,” he said. “Not a ‘blame game’.”

The policy is now back under discussion, he indicated.

“Hopefully we will see the Department of Justice and Homeland Security working to effectuate a policy that is both humane as well act as some type of deterrent and enforcement of our borders,” he said. “Hopefully it will get people on both sides of the aisle talking about what realistically we can get done to try to secure our borders and at the same time do some other things that are important. DACA is important … and how to deal with these families.”

Whether anything will get done “remains to be seen,” he said, “since we do have an election year and I continue to be afraid that politics will take over for the real right thing to do for the American people and the humane thing to do for those who are trying to enter this country as part of the American dream.”

When asked if he was disappointed that Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has not spoken out on this issue although some Republicans and Democrats in the state have made statements, he said, “Absolutely. I think everyone needs to have spoken out on this issue from both parties. We saw leaders of faith across the country speak out on this issue.”

“This is a humanitarian issue, a crisis issue,” he said. “People across the world are criticizing the United States of America for human rights violations. Think about that. Think about all the things we have done across the globe to bring democracy and human rights to the entire planet and now we are being criticized for human rights violations. Every person of good will and good conscience needs to be talking about this.”

Yet he indicated that the administration and Congress need to find a long-term solution.

“Let’s talk about how we can make this work going forward and not just talk about it in political terms but real human and economic development terms,” he said.

He reminded everyone that there was a bill moving in Congress earlier this year to deal with the Dreamers, illegal immigration and border security that failed to pass before a winter break.

“We would not be in the situation had the president and Homeland Security not torpedoed that bill at the very last minute, and put out information that was absolutely wrong,” Jones said. “There is no-one that I have met in Washington, D.C. who wants open borders. We all want border security. The question is funding it, partially with a wall, with technology, trying to help ease the backlog of the cases that are there now with more judges. This all went down in flames because of the administration in February.”

There is talk of reviving that bill, Jones said, but “it is going to be difficult I think because it has become now even more of a political issue than it was back in February.”

When asked if some of the immigrant children could end up in private detention prisons in Alabama, Senator Jones said: “I think that’s entirely possible. We’ll have to wait and see.”

According to a report from the Public Radio International and WGBH and WNYC Studios:

The Migrant Detention Business is More Profitable Than You Think

June 21, 2018

Up first, we take a look at the money behind private corrections and detention operators via a comprehensive report from the Corrections Accountability Project. Then, we talk to a self-described lifelong Republican Reverend about how he got interested in immigration, and why faith leaders chose to speak out now; we have a conversation about the farm bill with a Latino farmer who owns a small organic farm in CA; plus, a look at a documentary following the first eight months of a refugee family resettlement.